Dear Andy,
I just received a message where the "Date" column showed up
blank in the message list.
The right hand area in the message view also shows up blank for
this message.
The Date header from the message is as follows:
-----
Date: Mon Jul 23 16:36:17 2018
-----
It seems to be missing a comma after "Mon". Is that strictly
incorrect or should the client parser be able to tolerate it?
The parser chokes on it. And it is not just the comma; AFAICS it should be
"Mon, 23 Jul 16:36:17 2018", so day and month are also switched.
Currently the relevant fragment of the regexp dealing with this is
(edited):
"(?:"
"([A-Z][a-z]+)"
"\\s*,\\s*"
")?"
"(\\d{1,2})" // 2: day
"\\s+"
"(" // 3: month
// month triplets OR'd
")"
So if there is a weekday, it currently has to have a comma. This could be
relaxed. For the month/month day switch, this could be dealt with by
allowing two variants, but this would need to include requiring the day
name for the variant where the month/month day are switched…
So it is doable, but messy. Also, the spec is rather clear on how the Date
header should be formatted:
<https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5322#section-3.3>.
Do you have an idea about what system generated that date? The best option
may be to file a bug report there.
Best,
Erik
